One of Sharpworks' current projects is to produce a fast loader program to enable tapes to be loaded and saved much more quickly than the Monitor usually does but also to keep reliability. We're nearing completion of it in fact. I've just uploaded a video showing a 'trial run' of the program where I load BASIC SA-5510 (the MZ-80A's BASIC) at standard speed from the standard tape, then I save it in the new 'fast' format and finally I load it back in via the fast load. The video is here:

And so you can see that we nearly halve the loading time. We are still saving two copies of the program (in the same way that the usual Monitor routines do), just in case there is a checksum error / bad tape etc but obviously we stop loading if the first copy is loaded in correctly.

Hopefully this is going to be of use to people and I'll have a lot more information towards the end of this month when we should be releasing it (in some beautiful packaging). So far the loader is compatible with MZ-80A and MZ-80K (a special MZ-1200 version will be made as it has less RAM). I'm also looking to make it compatible with MZ-700.